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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Following the limited palette suggestions from the book "The Yin/Yang of Painting" this is the same girl previously painted red and green, now with blue and orange. This palette still allows for interesting flesh tones, but I think the red and green is better.

Missing my brushes while at a Master Quilt Class taught by Hollis Chatellain.hollisart.com. Check out her amazing work, though the web photos don't capture how fantastic her work truly is.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

This small study was painted by wetting the area to be painted, then dropping individual thinned paint colors into the drying puddle.
The colors used were mostly transparents: aureolin yellow, permanent rose, cobalt blue, scarlet red and sap green. Some indanthrone blue was added for a deeper dark in the end.

Monday, February 25, 2013

This painting continues to explore the limited palettes described in the
book: "The Yin and Yang of Painting". This one is orange/ blue. In addition, I have been experimenting with different priming paints and this one was a yellow acrylic that was very slick. When I attempted to use Julie Ford Oliver's fracturing method (link) on this surface, it scraped clean as a whistle. Eventually, I decided to scratch the surface for texture.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

I asked Kat Coy, an excellent painter friend of mine (her blog), how she achieved her beautiful flesh tones. She recommended the book "The Yin Yang of Painting" by Hongnian Zhang. This beautiful book uses complementary color palettes, illustrated by beautiful paintings. I decided to experiment with these limited colors. This painting is done in red and green (and a last bit of cad yellow (cinnabar green light was not enough for me)). In addition, I have been experimenting with edges and texture (scratching mostly). Julie Ford Oliver (link) recently published her "fracturing technique" as an art byte (found here). This is my first attempt that seemed to achieve what I wanted using this technique. It is a lot of fun, definitely worth trying!

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The watercolor study today uses thin layers of color. The colors used were: cerulean blue, burst sienna, yellow ochre, rose madder genuine and a touch of cobalt blue, raw umber and ivory black. These colors were those used in the workshop give by Paul McCormack (link).

In this study, the focal point will be the puppy's eye (and face). Therefore, that is where all the detail will eventually be.

Some of the process photos were shot wet, so the colors appear darker than they are when dried completely.

Monday, February 18, 2013

I attended a wonderful three day workshop with Paul McCormack (link). Paul is an fantastic artist, as evidenced by the link here. He is also a remarkable teacher. He has well organized lessons, answers any and all questions and works tirelessly to help each student. He is planning on returning to Raleigh to the Art of the Carolina's this fall and may also teach a three day oil painting workshop. If you can, you should plan on attending one of his classes. You won't be disappointed.
Because of this workshop, I haven't painted in oils for several days. Therefore, I decided to paint a familiar subject. I was thinking about lost edges and reflected color when I painted these old favorites. Warming up for a productive week.

Friday, February 15, 2013

I actually painted this yesterday while I was playing with testing different backgrounds. This background was quite slick and hard to make the paint "stick". I found the little rectangular strokes worked the best technically. I thought it made an interesting painting. Today, I spent a FANTASTIC day in a workshop by Paul McCormack. If you want to be amazed, look here. Yes, these are watercolors!!!!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

I have been working on changing the ground color that I paint on. Karin Jurick (link) uses a flat black background for many of her paintings. I have struggled with this as I have tried to paint my Hilton Head mugs. I paint fairly thinly so my people always look "spotty" as the black peeks through. On white, the flesh is too sickly pink for my taste. This painting was painted over orange. I liked the orange so much that I left a lot showing and I "cut out" other areas as well. It definitely makes my flesh look more alive.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Glazes on wet surface were built up layer by layer to paint the same jar in the same colors as last week's post (link). I find that glazing is especially useful for transparent flowers (see the white tulip from earlier this week (link)). I think that glazing gives a kind of dimension and glow that is unique to watercolor.

Monday, February 11, 2013

This is the second time I painted this image. The first was a "wipe" as were two other paintings today. Persistence pays off. The bright spots of red, orange and blue made this painting more interesting to me.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

We saw this parrot outside a minimart when we were traveling. The bird saw us watching him and proceeded to "dance" and strut, bob and shout "Hello, Hello". It is painted in wet washes of analogous colors: carmine, alizarin crimson, scarlet red, transparent orange, aureolin and then some horizon blue and sap green in the wing feathers

If you see some displaced spiders, they are probably ones moved during my studio cleaning. Probably this revised space will make for some great painting experiments!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

This is painted in Dream Tolle Perry's style. The underpainting is thin transparent colors. Rich colors are overlaid next, pulling some of the color up and leaving some spots peeking through. Dreama is a wonderful teacher. If you have a chance to take a workshop with her, you would love it. Her 2014 schedule just went up. You can find it here.

Friday, February 8, 2013

I was interested in painting these tulips with dimension and clean, bright colors. The crispness of the white flower was achieved with layers of thin glazes of cobalt blue, aureolin yellow and permanent rose. The red tulip is scarlet red, purple magenta and permanent rose. Wet into wet background gives the soft edges.

Today was a first at achieving a watercolor effect in silk. I was afraid that the background would run into the poppy so I added a cold wax resist line which gave the white.Next time, I will omit this and the "stencil" effect will be gone and a painting will be achieved.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Most of today was spent exploring new silk dyes, resists, and color mixing. The lily seen below was painted with full strength dyes. They bled after steaming which dulled down the colors. Never-the-less, I had a series of successful experiments painting without resists. I can't wait to work on this tomorrow. http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/sue-churchgrant/apple-study/120376

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The goal for this study was to paint pansies that were more abstract and less "cartoon-like". To accomplish this, I blocked in my large shapes. I then messed them all up, running the colors between the foreground and the background using the end of my brush. After I repainted the shapes of the flowers and the vase, it looked like the smaller version below. Finally, I added thick paint with a palette knife and cut into the shapes with the knife and my brush handle to add the texture and integrate the colors. Pansies will be another series, I can feel it!

This method uses water to model glass.1. Wet the paper and allow to bleed past the edge of the jar. Just as the shine disappears, drop liquid paint onto the surface.

Mop out areas of white highlights with a thirsty brush. Allow the paper to dry. 2. Paint the shadow areas of the lid onto paper that has been wet and just lost its sheen. This time, apply paint that is quite thick so it doesn't move much when it is applied to the moist paper. Because the paper is moist, this will still create a soft edge.

1.

2.

After drying, 3. the paint the lid in with the various neutrals made from the original colors.

Monday, February 4, 2013

I loved the contrasting red and blue of this boat and the sail. I wanted to paint something small to get warmed up again and I had not painted a boat before. I like this little painting as a start to the week.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

At the close of the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Day Challenge, there was a death in my family. A wonderful person that touched the lives of her family so that they arrived from great distances. I lost only two but two full days of painting. Today, I tried a warm up watercolor and felt like a beginner. I attempted to push along my silk painting project and still felt out of my element. So, I decided to modify an oil painting I wasn't fully happy with. That painting is now in the trash.

Here is the data on Muscle Loss in Sports:
An article by Ben Greenfield (link): "How Fast Do You Get Out of Shape?" reports that muscles can atrophy (muscles get smaller) and muscle fiber type conversion (change what they are made of) can occur in as little as 72 hours. The amount of change or loss depends on how often the muscle is used. The better the shape the muscle was in before being unused, the slower it will atrophy.

Anders Ericsson's (link) research is the basis for the 10,000 hour rule (or ten year rule) which suggests that proficiency in any field requires this amount of deliberate practice time. I imagine this 10,000 hour proficiency would be similar to a trained muscle in thinking about disuse atrophy.

The consensus of many of the participants in Leslie Saeta's challenge that daily painting practice improved their painting in as little as thirty days coupled with the disuse data suggests that my "out of sorts" painting day is to be expected. In sports, the better trained muscle bounces back more quickly than one that is less trained. We'll see whether that applies to my painting experience when I start again tomorrow.

Here is an older painting, "Pink Showers" that has yet to find its forever home.

About Me

Sue ChurchGrant is a former pediatrician, now painter, who loves to paint people, especially children caught unaware. She is inspired by intense color and light . Her blog features small original watercolor or oil studies painted almost daily and her larger paintings can be found at suechurchgrant (dot) com